think: burning out

I am a sucker for working hard. I am also a sucker at slacking. I like to brand myself as a professional lazy-perfectionist. Sometimes I will wake up at the crack of dawn (by that I mean 8:30 am at the earliest), shove my laptop open, down a cuppa’ sugary coffee and find my fingertips dancing across the keyboard.

Other days, I will lie with my face up at the ceiling contemplating whether it is too early to go to Sainsbury’s and buy a bottle of wine. It is always one or the other, unfortunately never both.

Because of my fluctuating capability to manage my productivity, I usually find myself eventually drowning under the weight of my self-made promises – because I have once again bit off more than I can really afford to chew. Get that news piece done in the last ten minutes of my hospitality job break?

Expectations: “sure thang’ I will pop it over now.” Reality: racing around the bar, making cocktails, typing up the odd word on my phone screen, flinging “I am so bloody sorry” emails left right and centre.

Is there a cure for this? A remedy perhaps? Yeah, the answer is “say no”.

I have always struggled with saying no. I hate the sinking feeling in your stomach when you let somebody down who was all starry-eyed about you, and they metaphorically push you from the pedestal they had you perched upon. Because of this bitter hatred of mine, I try to do too much in too little time and eventually, not wanting to upset anybody is my own unmaking. What a cruel, cruel world this is. Just gimmie’ some more spins of the clock, Father Time.

Another reason I always seem to end up with piles of work fluttering around my ears is because I cannot find the work/life balance. Seriously, if you have found the code to keep you on a gold streak HAND IT OVER TO MY LIL’ MITTS. So by my work/life balance I mean:

Full-time hospitality employment

Full-time university education

Blogging

Music Journalist for a variety of music websites

Having a boyfriend

Keeping fit & healthy (IE. Remembering to eat food)

Social life (IE. Actually replying to my friends’ messages)

Treat yo’ self (IE. Wash my hair and change my bedsheets)

I mean do not get me wrong, I know that there are thousands of people in the industry that multi-task way more than I could ever dream of, but I am trying my hardest to get that balance correct. At this moment in time, the only thing that is really lax is the remembering to eat part of my life. But, who needs to eat when you can buy Topshop boots… Right?

So, biting off more than I can chew is a serious pet hate of mine which I do every damn day of my life. It is like when I have an assignment that I have had seven weeks to complete, and I still leave it ‘till the last day even though I ruddy hate myself every single time I do it. Will I ever learn?